As a teaching-learning approach, a solar concentrator for water heating was studied in the alternative energy course
with Pre-college level students in the Chapingo Autonomous University, that is, those students completing the
requirement course in order to be admitted into college. This study allows one to understand the way that the
manufacturing of a solar heater improves the learning process linked to physics concepts through worksheets. The
growing interest in clean energies makes it necessary to understand the functioning of alternative energy systems like
the thermal solar energy. Didactic exploration improves the learning process, linked to the physics concepts, when
worksheets were used in the physics lab and a multimedia system. The multimedia allows teaching physics concepts
with pictures, videos, texts and computer animations. This approach has been designed in four stages. The first stage
defines the theoretical framework of the proposal called "investigation teaching". The second describes the didactic
model, which consists of three kinds of worksheets: conceptual, phenomenological and experimental formal. The
third stage includes the discussion on the data collected and how the manufacture of a solar heater improves the
physics learning process among pre-college students. Finally, the last stage shows how information incorporated on a
multimedia could be useful to study physics concepts using the solar water heater.